In 1980 Chuck Bard, CEO of the Decathlon Club in Bloomington, Minnesota, sug- gested that his organization honor the best college hockey player each season with an award named after Hobey Baker. Since then, 31 players have won the award, all of them talented but none probably as dashing as Baker was when he graced the college ice.
The first player to win the Hobey Baker Award may have also been the best. Min- nesota’s Neal Broten was the inaugural winner in 1981, and it can be argued that no Hobey winner since has been a more accomplished player than Broten was.
“I don’t think I ever saw an American player better than Neal,” said Wisconsin coach Mike Eaves, who played with Broten on the Minnesota North Stars.
The list of winners includes such noteworthy NHL standouts as Brendan Mor- rison (1997), Chris Drury (1998), and Ryan Miller (2001), but the true debate of the best Hobey winner probably boils down to American Broten vs. Canadian Paul Kariya (1993).
Kariya was the better goal scorer, producing 402 career goals. Broten was the better playmaker, recording 634 assists. Kariya was a point-per-game player, and Broten was slightly below that pace. Both players have Olympic gold medals, with Broten earning his in 1980 and Kariya picking up his in 2002. Broten won a Stanley Cup (with New Jersey in 1995), and Kariya did not. But the greatest difference be- tween the two players is Broten’s reputation for being a two-way forward, a differ- ence-maker in all three zones of the ice, and an expert in the faceoff circle.
“He played the way that Pavel Datsyuk plays today,” said USA Hockey’s assistant executive director Jim Johannson. “He could take the puck away from you the way Datsyuk can.”
Broten—from Roseau, Minnesota—was only 5′9″ and 175 pounds, and his NHL career was born in an era when NHL coaches were demanding bigger players. “But you never heard anyone say he couldn’t play because of his size,” said Lou Nanne, a former Minnesota North Stars general manager.
Trying to dislodge the puck from Broten’s grasp was often an exercise in futility.
“What people didn’t realize about him was how strong he was on his skates,” Nanne said. “He had excellent balance. When you watch great players you never re- ally hit them hard. You didn’t hit Wayne Gretzky hard and you didn’t hit Broten hard.”
It was Nanne who drafted Broten in 1979 after watching him dominate in the Minnesota High School Tournament for three seasons and in his first college sea- son at Minnesota.
In real terms, Nanne traded famed NHL tough guy Dave Semenko to Edmonton to acquire Broten. The North Stars had drafted Semenko in the second round (25th overall) in the 1977 NHL draft only to have Semenko spurn their offer and jump to the Edmonton Oilers of the World Hockey Association. When the NHL annexed the WHA in 1979, Semenko’s rights reverted to the North Stars. Again, Nanne couldn’t sign him, but Semenko turned out to be a valuable asset. Nanne correctly surmised that he could turn Semenko’s rights into Broten. At that time, NHL teams were still not completely comfortable drafting players from colleges, and Nanne figured Broten, being a smallish American center, was probably projected to be a third-round pick. Going into the 1979 draft, no true American player had ever been drafted in the first round, and only a handful of Americans had been drafted in the second round. Nanne wanted to draft Broten in the second round; the problem was that he didn’t have a second-round pick because he had dealt his to the Mon- treal Canadians for the rights to American-born defenseman Bill Nyrop. Knowing the Oilers wanted Semenko’s fists back to protect Wayne Gretzky, Nanne was able to acquire a second- and third-round pick from Edmonton for Semenko’s rights.
The Oilers’ pick was the last pick in the second round, but Nanne was still confi- dent that Broten would still be there. At that point, only a handful of teams were scouting aggressively in the U.S. The Semenko deal was finalized before the draft started, but it wasn’t announced right away. Nanne recalls that the late Max McNab, then general manager of the Washington Capitals, called him late in the second round trying to deal him his pick early in the third round. McNab didn’t know that Nanne had secured Edmonton’s pick.
“I know you want Broten, and I’m taking him with that pick unless you make a deal with me now,” McNab told Nanne.
“You can have him,” Nanne said, not revealing that he had already made his move to land Broten.
The timing of Broten’s draft year couldn’t have been better for Nanne. Broten was eligible for the NHL draft after his first college season and before he played with the U.S. Olympic Team in 1980. Had Broten’s draft eligibility been after the Olympics, he probably would have been a first-round pick.
he oddest aspect of the argument that Broten is the best Hobey Baker winner is that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion that Broten was going to win—or even de- served to win—that year. That season, Neal had 17 goals and 54 assists for 71 points in 36 games for the Gophers. His brother, Aaron, 11 months younger than Neal, had 47 goals and 59 assists for 106 points in 45 games for Minnesota that
season. But voters seemed to factor in that Neal had missed nine games due to in- jury and that he was considered the more complete player. Although the Hobey Baker Award is given for the best performance of the season, it seems fair to won- der if voters were influenced by Neal Broten’s history. By the time he was a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award, he had already scored the game-winning goal for Minnesota two years before in the 1979 NCAA Championship Game and then had been among Coach Herb Brooks’ best players when Team USA won the gold medal at the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid.
Although the Hobey Baker goes to the best college player regardless of citi- zenship, an American has won the award two-thirds of the time. In the first 31 years, there have been 21 American winners. Here is a look at what the Hobey Baker winners accomplished in their pro careers:
1981: Center Neal Broten* (Minnesota): Probably considered among the top five to ten players in American hockey history. Played in the NHL with Minnesota, Dal- las, New Jersey, and Los Angeles.
1982: Left wing George McPhee (Bowling Green): Played 115 games in the NHL as a feisty forward but is more remembered as the longtime GM of the Washington Capitals.
1983: Defenseman Mark Fusco* (Harvard): After an outstanding career as a puck-moving defenseman at Harvard, he played for the 1984 U.S. Olympic Team and then spent two NHL seasons with Hartford.
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